 |
|||||
|
Letters
Justice is blind
Dear ER:
I'd like to toss my hat in the ring and join in the controversy concerning topless girls on the beach in Hermosa. I've thought many times that if girls demanded their constitutional rights they could either go topless or force the men to wear T-shirts on the beach. Women are different than men? Well yes, I know that, you know that; but the law doesn't know it. Gloria Allred where are you?
The only real objection I see is that, initially, every yahoo and knucklehead in the area will to come to gawk. Someone once said, "Evil is in the eye of the beholder." The solution would seem to be to keep the "evil eyes" out of Hermosa.
G.H. Perry
Hermosa Beach
School arithmetic
Dear ER:
What a shame that Assistant Manhattan Beach School Superintendent Scott Smith has chosen to blame the special education budget on the fact that parents are asking for services to allow their children with special needs access to an education. How unfortunate that the district did not do an appropriate needs assessment to plan for the changing numbers of children needing these services in order to have that access, despite the fact that it was specifically called for in the last Coordinated Compliance Review by the CDE.
The special education enrollment numbers, according to the California Dept. of Education CASEMIS database indicate that the number of children with autism in MBUSD has gone from 14 in 1999 to 23 in 2000, nearly double in one year. Additionally, two local children with autism are enrolled in LA County programs, another child with autism who lives in Manhattan Beach is receiving services in Redondo, and another child with autism who lives outside the district receives services in MBUSD. Children who are receiving services under Part C of IDEA, ages 0-5, are not included in this data. Including the children with autism currently in our preschool programs adds approximately six more children with autism in MBUSD. The numbers combine to over 30 children with autism within MBUSD.
The California Dept. of Developmental Services last year released a report to the legislative showing a 273 percent increase in autism from 1987 through 1998. What a shame that the MBUSD did not consider the substantial and very public increases in the numbers of children with autism when planning their special education budget.
How unfortunate that in spite of these increased needs, they plan to reduce staff development costs. There is a direct connection to the lack of staff development, the rise in district litigation costs, and autism. What a shame that MBUSD does not recognize this.
Dona Wright
Manhattan Beach
Timing
Dear ER:
At least the Political Bureaucracy in Redondo Beach is consistent. Consistently confused, wasteful and incompetent. They instigate a contract, in excess of $100,000 for a preliminary study to look at harbor area development. This seemingly was promoted to look at what to do with the Edison property when the city gets it back and how to tie it to the overall harbor redevelopment. At the same time they issue building permits, and allow to be built, a complex of self-storage vaults dead smack in the middle of the area being studied for harbor development. Must make sense to somebody, but not me.
William Mathews
Redondo Beach
Priorities
Dear ER:
I recently moved to Manhattan Beach from Hollywood, where I am a publicist, so I feel a know something about the media. I took immediately to your publication after finding it on my doorstep the first week I lived here. It brought me up to speed on the Metlox situation, which clearly was a big deal for the locals. Blue and white signs urging me to vote "No" or "Yes" were everywhere. A banner waving adjacent to the site reminded me every time I came into or left downtown that "my vote counted." Protesters occasionally clogged the streets. I dare say there was not a bigger story on the minds of your readers.
So I have to ask: What the hell were you guys thinking when you decided to not run any mention of the results until page 10? You put news of the demonstration in front of the site on the cover without telling us what we really wanted to know.
I had to ask.
Jonathan Zaleski
Manhattan Beach
Timber in the eye
Dear ER:
I have just watched the Redondo Beach City Council and city staff discussing the violation of the municipal code regarding permitted work hours for construction. What a joke. In 1998, while the city was repairing the Pier parking structure, I begged for some relief from the huge diesel generator that ran 24 hours a day and the workers who sometimes started sandblasting or jackhammering at 5:30 AM, and often worked until after 10:30 p.m. The waters were polluted with thousands of gallons of mud everyday for almost a week. That was on top of the usual noise created by the city workers hosing all the trash off the boardwalk into the waters of Basin 3, typically at 6 a.m. I called the police and, as usual, they did nothing. I went to city staff members had an excuse and lie for every illegal action of the city-hired contractors (PDS Construction). I went to the city council meeting to express my frustration and was told by Mayor Greg Hill that they would "look into it" -- his usual line excusing his inaction. Of course, my council representative Kevin Sullivan did absolutely nothing at all -- not a word, as usual.
I listened as, then city manager and current school board candidate Paul Connelly told the city council and the citizens of Redondo Beach that the generator was not being run 24 hours a day, they weren't polluting the waters of Basin 3, construction was all within the proper period of time and that everything was just fine. Did anyone at City Hall help at all? Ha!
Further, my office backs up to the city's maintenance yard. They often start banging around way before 7 a.m. Who knows when they stop. Do you think the city will enforce the noise ordinances against their own maintenance yard? Ha!
Here's a suggestion for Mayor Hill, the city council, city manager Garcia and city staff. Clean your own house first. You are far worse than any of the contractors you are chasing after.
Stefan McDonald
Redondo Beach
A writer's writer's writer
Dear ER:
In the dozen-or-so years that I have read Easy Reader, Andrea Bruning has written by the far the gutsiest piece of writing I've seen in your publication yet ('Ray Bradbury," June 15, 99). Good quotes, informative, and controversial. A "God damn" good piece of work.
Ray Bradbury is without question one of the taller of the literary giants of the century, not only for science fiction, but for unforgettable literary excellence, as well. Even today, Bradbury's "Illustrated Man," "Dandelion Wine," "Golden Apples of the Sun," and other novels and short stories fire the imaginations of this writer and thousands of others.
Bradbury's right, too. Libraries are becoming book cemeteries, and we should crack open those dusty volumes and release the magic that comes with reading as people have done for thousands of years. Read the ink, and get your nose off the web page for awhile.
It was mighty white of reporters Robb Fulcher, John Tawa, and Jason Dietrich to inch aside, and let a tiny sliver of the "Easy Reader" spotlight fall on Bruning's Bradbury piece. C'mon, guys-other people can write well, too, you know.
Robert Stevens
Lomita